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  Then her face crumpled, her entire body folded in toward Maddie, she buried her face in her partner’s lap and sobbed.

  Maddie bent over her, surrounded her, stroked her hair, shushed her, crying, too, making emotional promises, soft vows, swearing whatever oaths Jess needed to hear.

  Russ shut the door behind them when he and Janina left the room.

  The instant they were alone, Janina stepped into him, slid her arms around him. “How?” she asked simply.

  He didn’t need a translation to know what she meant. “I saw movement. I went to find out what it was. She said before the fire got too close Charlie’d been keeping watch on this place, knew it was mine. Saw us here the day we came back from Vegas, watched you and Maddie and Jonah get this place set up. But he kept waiting for to catch on to the hunt, bring me and come to him. She finally got loose and brained him. Took off in the wrong direction until she figured she lost Charlie, then worked her way back around here.”

  “What is she, some kind of Navy Seal or something?”

  Russ shook his head. “Spends a lot of time Orienteering as a sport. She’s pretty good. Got a bunch of awards, from what Maddie’s told me. Not Maddie’s thing though—and way she was treated when she was out in the woods, I don’t blame her.”

  “But it was still you who had to go out and bring her in.” Janina hugged him tightly, rested her cheek against his torso. “My hero.”

  He snorted. “She’d have made it under her own steam, if I hadn’t seen her. Woman’s stubborn. Wouldn’t be with Maddie if she weren’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You still did the deed.” She stepped on his foot and grinned. “In your bare feet no less.”

  He chuckled. “Shoes are too noisy.”

  She sighed, pressed a kiss into the center of his bare chest.

  He cupped her head, stroked her back. Told her wryly, “You might not want to get so close. I’m pretty sweaty.”

  “We could shower together.” Janina circled one of his nipples with her tongue then the other, making him shudder. “Because I want to get a lot closer than this right now.”

  His laughter was low and smoky. “Hold on to that thought? We’re about to be inundated with company.”

  She reached up, laced her fingers behind his head and drew him down into a kiss filled with promise and passion.

  “Later then,” she whispered when she let him go.

  She would take Jess’s admonition to Maddie to heart and tell him all tonight, the minute they had the bedroom to themselves and she had his full and undivided attention.

  For a change.

  A thorough sweep of the thirty-five-acre property, of the surrounding area led to no sign of Charlie.

  Which didn’t make Russ happy in the slightest.

  Particularly not when Jess was able to fill him in on the facts of how low Charlie’s medication had run and how serious it had become the minute he’d stopped taking enough of it.

  But Russ kept his concerns as tightly bound as he could, put himself on hyperalert, lit a fire under Jonah now that they had three women to guard, pulled in Carson full-time, and intensified security around his perimeters as best he could.

  Beyond that, there was little more he could do besides ride it out, and he knew it.

  “Oh my…Russ. Russ! Pleeeaasse…”

  Nearly sobbing with pleasure, Janina twisted, lifted her hips off the bed, either trying to get closer to or escape from her tormentor’s wicked mouth, she was too far gone to know which.

  He tucked his big hands around her, anchored her against him with a murmured, “C’mon, love, give it to me. You know what I want. What we both want.”

  Oh sweet heaven, did she! And that’s what it would be: heaven. To give him what he wanted—what she wanted, as well.

  To give up, give over, give in and then unite and fuse.

  To join and become one. Become whole.

  The same thing he was willing to do for, and with, her every single time he joined her in their bed, or wherever else their loving took them.

  Regardless of what she still held back.

  And suddenly, she knew she couldn’t hold back any longer. Had to tell him what she was hiding from him—all of it, babies, Buddy, everything—before they finished this.

  She grabbed his head between her hands and tried to lift it. “Russ?”

  And gasped.

  And lost her train of thought when her all-too-perceptive husband chose that precise instant to tongue the exact, most exquisite spot designed to drive her mad, send her over the edge, and start her body on a course of spiraling climaxes that only increased in intensity when he surged up her body and plunged into her to join her.

  3:13 a.m.

  Russ sought solace in Janina’s body, comfort, respite, relief.

  He also simply couldn’t stop himself making love to her.

  She smelled different lately, sweeter, headier, incredibly more luscious and ripe. Her skin glowed from the inside, and her nectar…

  Heaven.

  She was his and he couldn’t believe his luck.

  When she came for him, he lost himself, let himself go, didn’t have to think about chains linked to the floor. He was simply free, unfettered.

  Unbound.

  So when they finally slept, he wrapped himself around her, as much to protect himself as to protect her. Because losing her would be losing more of himself than he could possibly spare.

  He crouched in darkness smelling the thick, rusty scent of iron and knew someone nearby was bleeding. He rubbed his head with the hand that didn’t hold the gun and tried to remember what had happened. It didn’t help, so he tried pounding his temple with the heel of his gun hand, but all that did was make his headache worse.

  “No.” He shook his head, a sort of rapid tick from side to side. “No.” Trying to assure himself. Of what he didn’t quite know. “Wasn’t me.” But he had the feeling it had been. Some person connected to him. Using his hands. His arms. A piece of his unhealthy brain. “Is he dead? I can’t tell.”

  “No.”

  The assertion was sudden, definite. For an instant the frightened part of him peeked out of his head, then that other person shov back in, stuck him out of the way.

  “No,” he said again. This time he said it with purpose and authority.

  This time he wiped the blood from his hands using the back of Carson’s uniform, noting with detachment that the boy was still breathing as he hauled him quickly into some brush where he’d be out of sight.

  Then he zigzagged silently in the direction of the trailer, alert to the presence of whatever other interference he might need to deal with as he went.

  Maddie moved restlessly in sleep, tried to fit herself closer to safety, to Jess.

  But even in slumber, Jess, bruised and hurting, shifted uncomfortably away from her, muttering incoherently at first then with greater clarity, “Wakey-wakey, my girl, Daddy’s here. Time to get it done.”

  “Russ. Russ!”

  He was awake and alert before she’d finished saying his name once. Maddie, calling him in a voice little short of a scream.

  “Don’t let him take her again.”

  He reached under his pillow and started to come off the bed in a single movement, dropped back when he felt Janina stir and scooted her groggily off her side of the bed and onto the floor where out of sight could mean safer.

  “Stay down, keep quiet and cover your head,” he whispered. “I’ll be—”

  Trying hard not to lose it completely, Maddie stumbled backward into the patch of moonlight that silvered a path across the bed and onto the floor inside the bedroom door. Fingers of one hand laced tightly in Jess’s hair using it as leverage to shove her along, and visibly trembling gun tamped behind her right ear with the other, Charlie Thorn followed his daughter.

  “You’ll be a while,” he said, blinking rapidly, but verbally coherent for the moment. He glanced at Russ’s hand, still under the pillow, and his mouth twitched. “Leav
e the gun. Don’t want any accidents. Had enough of those.” Turned to Janina, not quite on the floor. “You. I seen you before, haven’t I. You take the pillow. Do it slow. Slide it, that’s the way.” Back to Russ. “Fingers off the weapon, one at a time. Raise your hand. Good. No fuss, no bother, no accidents.” He shifted, keeping Jess in front of him. Gestured with his head. “Get over there with my baby. My girl. Keep plenty of space between you, hear?”

  When they’d done as instructed, he dragged Jess over to the bed and collected Russ’s weapon. His mouth twitched again. “Kitchen,” he said. “Haven’t eaten in days. I’m hungry. March.”

  Dawn brought full bellies but no relief.

  It also brought Janina a full-on case of unwanted-but-forced-breakfast-at-gunpoint post-breakfast nausea.

  Grimly Russ held her head at the kitchen sink and shot Maddie’s sire a look that, were there justice in the world, should have killed him on the spot. He wrung out a clean dish towel in cold water, applied it to the back of her neck.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah.”

  She started to nod weakly then loosed a wretched invective and returned to the sink as her stomach clenched again.

  Russ’s jaw tightened and he looked at Charlie.

  “You’ve eaten. Let’s get to it, Thorn.” He relaxed one hand with an effort and placed it protectively on Janina, gestured at Jess with the other, making sure to include Maddie even though he knew that was pushing it. “You don’t want them, you came for me. So let’s us guys get out of here and leave the women to it, how ’bout it?”

  For the tick of an instant, clarity wandered across Charlie’s face and through his eyes. For that same fractional sweep of the clock’s second hand in the passage of a minute, his gaze slipped toward his daughter and registered what for him Russ thought must pass for emotion.

  Then it was gone. Clarity shattered. Simply left Charlie’s face, his eyes, his person.

  What remained was frightening—a psychotic episode created by the abrupt and prolonged absence of chemicals his brain had come to rely on for creating proper thought and behavior. His hands wavered, body trembled, gaze turned inward as if he listened to something outside their experience. The gun that had lifted toward the ceiling and almost ceased to be an immediate threat dropped back into position, aimed at Janina.

  “No, Charlie. Charlie.” Though he said it sharply, Russ tried to keep both voice and demeanor calm and focused. A bare toe at a time, he inched forward, maneuvering to get between Janina and his confiscated department-issue .45. “Charlie, look at me.”

  But Charlie was elsewhere, awareness keened on one night thirteen years earlier on the girl who might have been Janina, or maybe someone resembling her.

  “I know you,” he hissed. “You were there that night. You saw it all. You know what happened.” His voice was a harsh drawl. His eyes burned, his skin flushed, ran with sweat. “They wanted you over, too, you know. But me, I said no, leave that one outta it.” He laughed, a skin-creeping sound. “Yeah. I know you. I know all about you. Saved you from hell, you don’t even know.”

  His gaze wavered over her with something akin to ownership, and Russ knew without doubt, that Charlie was indeed seeing Janina at sixteen—and younger.

  Instinctively he put out an arm to block her from the monster’s view, but Charlie anticipated the younger man and moved faster than Russ guessed humanly possible, if in a wholly different direction.

  Almost before anyone could blink, he’d knocked the table out of the way, lunged across, laced his fingers through a fistful of Maddie’s hair and dragged her to him.

  As though caused by the sudden exertion, a handful of epileptic-appearing tremors spasmed through him the moment he straightened, jerking control of the muscles of his face and left arm, stuttering into his left leg until the chair beside him rattled the floor.

  His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t lose consciousness and his grip on Maddie didn’t

  In fact, if anything, all it did was contract, causing him to tighten his grip on Maddie.

  And Russ’s gun.

  Charlie’s seizure naturally produced multiple contractions in his left hand. The one slung around the butt of the gun, index finger through the trigger guard and around the trigger, flexing on and off that sensitive little item with every flicker of his nerves and muscles.

  Coming up a hero took considerable concentration, great reflexes, a fair amount of timing and more often than not, victim cooperation. So when Russ shoved Janina to the floor, she went, devising her own plans on the way down. And Jess, having “been there, done that” as recently as a few days ago simply dropped at the same time. But Maddie…

  Russ pivoted forward and flipped her heels out from under her in order to unbalance Charlie and get her out of the way, then moved in to head butt Charlie in the face and take back his gun, Maddie, being Maddie, moved in the wrong direction. And got in the way, unbalancing Russ instead.

  In which case Charlie’s finger contracted fully around the trigger and Russ was shot point-blank in the upper left chest nearest his shoulder.

  “No. Oh nononononoooo!”

  Janina heard the screaming from a distance and wished someone would take the shrieking woman away and shake her so she could get to Russ. Because if she could get to him, he’d stop leaking red all over the place and be warm when she touched him.

  If only the screaming would stop.

  And then she reached him where’d he’d staggered back against the sink cupboards, slid down them and sagged.

  Touched him. Stepped outside herself. And knew she was the one screaming.

  “You bastard!”

  She scrambled for towels—paper, cloth, it didn’t matter so long as they’d stop the bleeding—not sure if she yelled at Russ, certain she shrieked at Charlie. Unwisely, she kicked out with a foot and flung a chair in his direction.

  “If he dies I will kill you personally.”

  The seizure left Charlie weak. He lolled his head in her direction, a margin of clarity once again written in his eyes. “I know.” He worked his mouth, trying to swallow as though his tongue felt thick, his mouth dry and cottony. “Couldn’t save her, but I saved you.”

  He’d said that before, Janina realized, and it still didn’t make sense. Right now she didn’t care. Right now all that mattered was Russ.

  She pressed towels down hard on his wound and he groaned. His glassy eyes turned her way.

  “Janie?”

  “Stay with me, damn you, Russ. Do you hear me?”

  He coughed. “Pretty bossy way to talk to the man who’s bleedin’ all over our brand-new kitchen floor.” He swallowed convulsively. “Know a good crime-scene cleaner you might wanna get in here

  “God…” Crying, she bussed him hard so he’d shut up. “Damn you. This is not a joke.”

  The too-small towel soaked blood, squished it up between her fingers and over her hands. She’d lose him before they ever had a chance to tell each other anything important if she couldn’t stop the bleeding.

  “Janie?”

  She blinked at him. He tried to lift his good arm so he could stroke her cheek, but he was already too weak to do it. Choking back a sob, she did it for him. Pressed her cheek into his palm. He ran the pad of his thumb over her lips. Offered her a grim travesty of her favorite Levoie grin.

  “Trust me?” he asked faintly.

  She eyed him incredulously. “You’re dying and you ask me this now?”

  He shrugged his mouth, grunted in pain. “I know you think—” He coughed, tried to adjust himself so he could breathe. Charlie was on him instantly, one weapon wavering undecidedly on Russ, another half drawn in the direction of Maddie and Jess. Russ ignored him, let his attention stay exclusive to Janina. “I know you think you can’t get pregnant and it doesn’t matter a damn to me.”

  He paused to draw a winded breath, ran his tongue around his mouth looking for moisture. “But you need to know, you are pregnant. I smelled it on you, tasted it
on you tonight, Janie. I’m not plannin’ to, but if I die today, I want you to marry Jonah. You like each other and you’ll be good together and you could do a lot worse—”

  Janina’s mouth dropped. “You arrogant, autocratic… If you don’t die today I am going to kill—”

  In the middle of the word, while Maddie and Jess, mouths agape, were starting to sputter in disbelief, and Charlie was momentarily distracted, she surged to her feet, caught up the cast-iron skillet off the edge of the sink with both hands, spun about in one of the lightning-quick turns she’d learned in her martial arts class and brained Charlie solidly with it.

  Then while Russ lost consciousness, and Maddie and Jess found Russ’s handcuffs for Charlie, she 911’d for a medevac helicopter and the troops to come get Russ—and whoever else might be down.

  Fast.

  Chapter 15

  Winslow, Arizona.

  August 20. Standin’ On The Corner Park

  It was a hellaciously long and scary few days.

  Janina sucked frozen mocha frappalatte between her lips and studied the hot brick morosely. Russ had been in the hospital nearly a week now and despite her druthers she couldn’t spend every minute at his bedside.

  For one, from practically the moment he’d gotten out of surgery and regained consciousness, he’d steadfastly refused to allow it because he worried she wasn’t getting enough rest enough to eat, enough time off her feet, enough you name it for every minute she spent with him. He wanted her, he said—and she, idiot that she was—believed him. He wanted her with him, wanted her around. He just didn’t want her watching over him while he slept, while he burned with fever, while he ached, lay shot up and trying to heal from the inside out.

  Didn’t want—or maybe that was need—her next to him while his teeth chattered and he mumbled or cried out in fevered dreams, and muscle and bone, ligament and fiber and tissue went through the initial stages of draining, straining and mending.